I think I need a bit quicker turnaround on my blog posting.
So here's a quick one.
Clickstream analysis or fallout report is very useful on a specific set of sequential actions but it is overrated in many of its applications in web analytics tools.
When analysing your clickstream data it should be at the visitor level with the option to look at the visit level if need be.
By looking at visit level data, yes you will be able to understand what parts of the process are letting you down but you will struggle to place an accurate value on this fallout because you will likely be ignoring many of your customers future actions.
Retail example
A good example of this is where a customer is asked for some information they don’t know off hand and their session times out before finding it. They then have to go through the complete process again to complete it. That first fallout was not a “true” fallout and it helps to understand this value in comparison to “regular” fallout.
Knowing you have a 50% fallout rate at a given point means different things if you consider two scenarios 1) where 100% of the people come back to complete the process end to end again 2) where only 10% of people come back and complete the process end to end.
In 1) It’s a temporary glitch in the purchasing process and it might make a lot of sense to develop some save and return functionality to make it smoother for a quantifiable portion of your customer base in 2) its indicative of a hurdle people don’t wish to get over and you need to seriously ask yourself why you are putting your customers through this pain.
B2B example
I’m an executive who downloads a PDF 5 times before becoming a lead. The fact I downloaded the PDF many times is in fact irrelevant (I just happen to be forgetful of where I download it to), the act of downloading is the key action that needs to be connected to the lead. This means for me you only see a lead created 1 in every 5 downloads (really poor lift/high fallout – 20%/80%) whereas in my case the connection between download and lead happened 100% of the time. Multiple me by all the other forgetful executives there are and suddenly you’ve lost insight of the power of one your greatest lead generators!
Hope that helps.
